- Network Distribution Feature: This will let you run ads on Yahoo! search pages, yahoo partners’ sites, or both. If you run your ads on yahoo’s entire network (search & partners), you can now set different bids. This is very similar to how Google Adwords bidding works, where you can choose different bid price for search & content network.

- Import Campaign Data from Google Adwords: Since many advertisers are often existing users of Google Adwords, Yahoo is making it easier the Adwords users to bring in their campaign data & settings with them so that they can start at Yahoo more comfortably. Advertisers can import their files by simply clicking the “Import Campaigns” button. Yahoo strongly believes that the the ease of launching campaigns with existing data will encourage more advertisers to use Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Well I have to say that this is indeed a cool feature. Many advertisers doesn’t want to spend the extra time to go through all the steps of setting up an ad campaign. Once yahoo brings out this easy import feature, many adwords advertisers are likely to try out Yahoo’s network.

If you are interested to see how these features will work, check out the video below:

Your customer is always searching for you online, and even though you have your Pay Per Click Advertising campaign running – they may not find you! Google Inside Adwords blog has recently posted a video, highlighting some of the best practices of writing your Google Adwords Ad copy. [If you are viewing this via Email - click here to watch the video]

Write Better Pay-Per-Click Ads – Follow Google’s Guideline

• Use your keywords in the ad text as it will appear in bold when your potential customer performs a search using those keywords.
• Be specific when creating your ad. An Ad that is very general in nature is less likely to do well compared to an ad which is very specific.
• Include a Special Officer or Unique selling point in your ad copy. Example – 10% discount, Free home delivery etc.
• Include a call-to-action in your ad. Think about what would you want your customers to do after they see your ad and state that clearly in your ad copy. Example – Buy now while stock lasts!, Request a Free Quotation etc.
• Make your ad text inter capitalized. Capitalize the first letter of each word in your ad copy as it looks more professional and has more chances of being seen and clicked.
• Don’t take your customer to your home page once they click on your ad. Instead take them to a specific landing page that supports your ad copy and the product that you are selling.

Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew writes:

In an effort to provide more relevant results and a high quality experience for our users, we’ve made the decision to disallow multiple display URL domains within a single ad group. Going forward, all display URLs within an ad group must have the same top-level domain

Which Advertisers will be affected by this change?

Advertisers who are using multiple/different display URL Domains on the same Ad Group on a campaign will be affected. So for instance, if you have an Ad group (i.e. Ad Group 1), with many different kinds of Display URL of one single domain that you are likely to be safe.

So the following Display URLs would be fine for a particular Ad Group:

www.example.com
www.example.com/product
product.example.com

However, if your Adgroup has display URLs showing multiple domains then you will be affected by this new change in policy.

For example the following Display URLs won’t be accepted, if used under one single Adgroup:

www.example.com
example.product.com (The Domain here is different – Product.com. You can only use ONE domain per Adgroup)
www.product.com

What should Advertisers Do?

If for some reason you need to have multiple domains in the Display URLs, you can simply create a separate Ad group for that purpose. Just make sure that you don’t have different display URL domains on a single ad group.

7 Tips to Save Money on your PPC Campaign

1. Stop using Broad Match – A lot of folks doesn’t know or probably doesn’t bother to use the different keyword match types that are available in Adwords. By default if you type in a keyword in your adwords campaign it is set as a “broad match”. The problem with a broad match is that your ad is often displayed in other different variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren’t in your keyword lists. Even though Google says that the broad match always uses relevant keywords, but we (‘advertisers’) know that its not often best for your business. For example, if Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney.com wants to bid on the keyword “Shoe Money” on a broad match, Google will probably find a lot of shoe related queries as relevant. (Which certainly isn’t the case here).

   So if you have done some work on your keyword research and you are confident with a couple of 2-3 words and long tail keywords, use the “Phrase” or [Exact Match] instead of a Broad Match.

2. Use Negative Keywords Effectively – I have seen a lot of PPC campaigns that doesn’t implement this sweet Keyword matching feature – Negative Keywords. Suppose you run a web hosting business and you are bidding on the keyword “web hosting” on broad or phrase match. So now suppose If someone performs a search for “free web hosting”, its basically going to trigger your ad. But do you sell web hosting for Free? No! Then do you want to pay for that extra click and have those unwanted impressions which is probably lowering your CTR (Click-Through-Rate)?You can use Negative Keyword match feature to filter out keywords for which you don’t want your ads to show. So words like “free”, “cheap” are common Negative keywords. But its not limited to that. Its absolutely essential to have negative keywords if you have a lot of broad/phrase match keywords in your campaign.

   If you are confused about your negative keywords, Go to Adwords Keyword Tool enter your keyword and choose the “Negative” in the drop-down under Match Type. This will show you a whole bunch of negative keywords that may suit your primary keyword.

3. Smart Bidding – If you have played with some auction sites like Ebay you probably know this secret already. A smart way of bidding for anything is to do the unnatural. Don’t bid like any other Joe, always try to bid in odds (I personally prefers to bid in 1s, 3s and 7s). Now the question is why? Well the main reason is doing odd things gives you an advantage over others who are always playing by their ‘predictabe’ rules. Thus it sort of gives you a higher chance of winning the bid war.

   So instead of bidding $0.10, I’d bid $0.13, and for $0.15 I’d prefer to bid $0.17. So for someone who is bidding in 5s (like 5, 10, 15, 20…), would need to place 4 bids to outbid my ($0.17). Moreover lets say if the highest bidder was $0.10, you can outbid him by only 1 cent ($0.11) rather than paying $0.15!

4. Create Separate Ad Group, Ads and Landing Pages – If your PPC account looks like my friend’s (1 Campaign, 1 Adgroup, 1 Ad, 1 Landing Page, 20 Keywords) then you are doing the whole thing wrong. Try to group similar keywords in Individual ad groups and create Individual Ads for those and point them to their designated Landing pages. This will not only improve your CTR but also improve your conversion.

   Lets say you are running a web hosting business, and you offer different types of hosting (e.g. Shared, Reseller, Dedicated etc). So for best result, you may want to split your whole keyword list into 3 logical segments related to the 3 different types of hosting you offer. And then use those keywords to create 3 different adgroups & Specific ads for the specific services. Point all those ads to your relevant landing pages (e.g. www.host.com/shared-hosting.html). This will definitely help you to get a better quality score as your ads & landing pages will become more relevant to the term the user is searching for. It is likely to increase your CTR & and will eventually lead to higher sales. So at the end of the day because of your good quality score you will be paying less and getting highly targeted audience to the highly targeted offer pages – All this just for a little bit of initial hard work from your side.

5. Geographic Target - If you are just a bakery at queens, why would you want to pay for clicks that are outside your business zone? Use the GEO target facility to target your audience well, this will substantially help you to lower your ad impression, higher CTR, higher quality score and a better ROI.
6. Time your Ads, Show your Ads When They Matter – If you are a local Pizza Store, would you want to show your ads when people at 3 AM search for Pizzas? (Assuming you don’t. have a 24 Hour Delivery). It would be ridicules and a big waste of money if you actually pay for clicks after your business hours where none of the searchers can actually order your pizza during that period of time.

   So What would you do? Use Ad Scheduling to time your ads to match your requirements. Ad scheduling lets you control the days and times your AdWords campaigns appear. So if you are running “Special offers” for Fridays, you can use Ad Scheduling to only show ads (a specific one) on Fridays. Try to think of a time when your ad would actually matter to your customer. By default, your ads will run for 24 hours in a day by trial and error you might be able to find out that running ads on a specific time of the day gives you more conversion! (e.g. People would search for “morning headache” usually in the morning after getting up from bed..)

7. Don’t bid on Content Network – I know some might disagree with me here but this is purely based on my own experience & what works best for me and my clients. I feel that even though bidding at content network is often cheaper, but in terms of conversion the performance of content network is very poor. Again, I’d say that this may be different for your case as some niches do really well in content networks. But if you are really starting out fresh with PPC & adwords, I’d urge you to remove content network from your campaign. This setting is set in the campaign level, so once you turn this off all the other ad groups that are in that particular campaign will be affected.

   What if you want the content network, but you dont want to harm your quality score by having too many impression and low CTR? Easy solution is to create a completely separate campaign only for content network and test the results! Note: You should ALWAYS modify your content network bid as its much lower than the search network bids.

Wait…You just got lucky, Here is a bonus tip for you.

Track Your Results: Google offers a Search Query Performance report that can basically show you the exact term that a user typed into Google that triggered your ad, the match type between your keyword, and the search query alongside all of the standard AdWords reporting metrics like click through rate, conversion rate, cost per conversion, etc.

Google has also done AdWords Integration in their Google Analytics — its an awesome tool that provides in-depth reporting on all aspects of your campaign’s performance.

So what other simple strategies you use in your campaign? Share in Comments!

Update: Here are some more bonus tips from the readers:

• Test Everything - Test everything. Split test, multivariate test, PAMVAR test… Test until the cows come home, and then test some more. (Shared by: Pete Wailes)

  Pay-Per-Click is not like flying on a plane (Once you get up, you can’t just get out unless the plane lands). In PPC everything is very flexible. So test your campaigns over and over again and tweak it according to the results that you are getting.




]]> http://www.saadkamal.com/google/7-tips-to-save-money-on-pay-per-click-campaign/feed/ 39 http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adsense-for-dormant-domains/ http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adsense-for-dormant-domains/#comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:56:37 +0000 Saad http://www.saadkamal.com/?p=937 Tamar @ Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google has expanded their Adsense for Domains to all publishers.

What is Adsense for Domains?

Adsense for domains is a way for you to show Google adsense ads in your dormant domains. (Domains that are currently not in use). So this service is simmilar to the “paid parking” service that you are probably familiar of. Adsense for domains was available to selected adsense publisher for quite some time, but it seems like Google has decided to open it up everyone.

What is My Take on Adsense for Domains?

• If you are a Publisher, you can by all means try it out and go for it. So If you got 1000 dormant domains, go ahead and install Adsense for domains on each of them…Pollute the web even more. (I’m assuming Google is going to index all of your sites because thats how they are supposed to make money right?).
• If you are an Advertisers, Bad news for you! If you are currently bidding on the content networks, Google has not provided any option yet to opt-out from your ads showing in those low-quality dormant domains. So you might end up spending a lot more on Adwords Content Network for poor / low quality traffic that might not convert for you. (Not everyone is as lucky as Efficient Frontier)
• Google has strict policy about displaying advertisements on pages that doesn’t have any content. From Google’s Adsense TOS:

  - No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages.

  - No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.

  Now my question is, if they can allow running ads on dormant domains (which has no content, btw), why wouldn’t they allow running adsense ads on non-content based pages. Aren’t they just contradicting themselves?

• Google always talks about “search quality” and “user experience”. Now I certainly don’t see parked pages being indexed & possibly ranked in Google to help in any of those. If the domain is undeveloped how / why would users even look for ‘relevant information’ there and why would it be even included in the Google Index? (To fool user in clicking those ads…?)

Is Whats up with Google? Are they becoming too Selfish & Commercial? Share your views in comments!

Update: Techcrunch points to this Guide – which basically shows you how an advertiser can block Domain Parked Sites in Google AdWords.




]]> http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adsense-for-dormant-domains/feed/ 2 http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-allows-mobile-ads-to-run-in-android-iphone/ http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-allows-mobile-ads-to-run-in-android-iphone/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:14:59 +0000 Saad http://www.saadkamal.com/?p=850 Official Google Mobile Blog is reporting that, Adwords advertisers can now target their ads to the Mobile users of Android, Iphone or any other mobile devices that support full HTML.

The ads can basically redirect to a desktop landing pages so you don’t need to create individual mobile landing pages or special ads in mobile formats. The ads will have many of the same benefits as Google’s standard mobile ads. For instance it will continue to deliver mobile-specific calls-to-action and reach mobile users that are searching with their phones more than ever — especially during the holiday season.

Watch the following video to learn more about Google Mobile Ads, or read what others have to say.

More discussion at Techmeme.




]]> http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-allows-mobile-ads-to-run-in-android-iphone/feed/ 0 http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-marketers-playbook-videos/ http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-marketers-playbook-videos/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:00:13 +0000 Saad http://www.saadkamal.com/?p=802 I just stumbled upon Google Marketer’s Playbook – which is basically a series of educational talks where Googlers discuss strategies for getting the most out of AdWords and other Google products such as Google Analytics and YouTube.

Basically these videos were shot some time in April 2008 during the ad:tech digital marketing conference.

The videos are quite lengthy, But they are pretty informative and you can take away a lot of golden nuggets from here. So here goes! (If you are reading this via RSS/Email Please go here to watch the videos).

Optimization Strategies – Part 1 by Paul Coutts

Optimization Strategies – Part 2 by Geoffrey Stirling

Measuring &Tracking for Success – by Ashish Vij

Increase Your Advertising Reach – by Nicole Resz

Online Video Advertising – by Ryan Hayward & Robert Victor




]]> http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-marketers-playbook-videos/feed/ 2 http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adwords-tactics-for-tough-economic-conditions/ http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adwords-tactics-for-tough-economic-conditions/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:24:30 +0000 Saad http://www.saadkamal.com/?p=799 Tamar Weinberg at Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google has recently published yet another guide, and this time its about Pay Per Click advertising.

In this guide Google gives PPC advertisers some Top tactics for using AdWords during a Recession or economic downturn.

Here is an outline of the things that the guide elaborates on:

1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings.
2. Use value-related keywords.
3. Make sure your ad groups are targeted and relevant.
4. Don’t waste money on irrelevant clicks.
5. Make it easy for customers to buy.
6. Focus your money on your high performers.

So Check out the Google’s Adwords Top Tactics for Tough Times.




]]> http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adwords-tactics-for-tough-economic-conditions/feed/ 0 http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adwords-ad-quality-videos/ http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adwords-ad-quality-videos/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:09:06 +0000 Saad http://www.saadkamal.com/?p=797 Inside Adwords blog reports that they have released two instructional videos that can walk you through the basics of Ads Quality and the transition to first page bids.

Ads Quality – Getting Down to the Basics

This video basically goes over the Ads Quality Basics. Once you watch it you will get some general introduction to Ads Quality, including a sweet overview of Google Adwords Quality Score and answers to some frequently asked questions about Ads Quality. If you have absolutely no idea of how this whole Quality Score thing works, This is a MUST watch video for you.

Quality-based Bidding Improvements

This video will give you more details on the recent changes made to the Ads Quality. If you wish to know more about how the change from inactive keywords to first page bids affects your campaigns, you should really take some time to watch this.

So if you have any specific tips for improving Adwords Quality score you can also share them in comments! Enjoy the Videos!




]]> http://www.saadkamal.com/google/google-adwords-ad-quality-videos/feed/ 1 http://www.saadkamal.com/microsoft/microsoft-advertising-podcast-matt-van-wagner-on-ppc-advertising/ http://www.saadkamal.com/microsoft/microsoft-advertising-podcast-matt-van-wagner-on-ppc-advertising/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:56:03 +0000 Saad http://www.saadkamal.com/?p=684 Microsoft Adcenter Community has just released their Thanksgiving edition of Microsoft Advertising Insights – the official podcast of Microsoft Advertising.

Microsoft Advertising Insights is basically a new show for Online advertisers (The first episode was released on 7th November), where the host Jason Yormark along with some other people from the Microsoft Advertising community team cover all things related to digital advertising, primarily focusing on search marketing. He talks about the current state of the industry, what’s happening behind the scenes with Microsoft Advertising (adCenter in particular), and delivers some useful information that can help you with your search campaigns.

In the latest Thanksgiving edition of Microsoft Advertising Insights, Jason got hold of Matt Van Wagner, President of Findmefaster.com at SMX East. Matt shares a very interesting story of a new advertiser in PPC and how that advertiser was able to grow her small business, discover a new market & ideas by simply being visible in the Search Engine.

Its just a 10 mins+ podcast but has some really useful information for the new advertisers who are thinking of trying out PPC in this holiday season.

In the podcast, Matt also shares some bonus tips for managing small PPC campaigns & also refers to a very interesting Keyword research tool called – Microsoft adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007.

This tool has been there for quite a while and it is very easy to use and can really contribute to your keyword research effort. Its a 100% free tool from Microsoft Advertising and as long as you have Microsoft Excel present in your system, you should be able to run it without any problem.

So Listen to this week’s Microsoft Advertising Podcast, if you are interested to learn more about how following some simple steps has helped a small business to grow its customer base & also expand its target market.

Direct download: http://www.adcentercommunity.com/podcasts/11_25_08.mp3

Or Just head over to Microsoft Advertising: Insights for details.




]]> http://www.saadkamal.com/microsoft/microsoft-advertising-podcast-matt-van-wagner-on-ppc-advertising/feed/ 0